


"i'll walk you home"

by clickingkeyboards



Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [5]
Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: Crushes, Developing Relationship, F/F, F/M, Fairgrounds, Fairs, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Sex Jokes, established relationships - Freeform, friendship fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-24 11:15:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21337345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: Daisy circles her life around a philosophy that each person sets off a different kind of crackling in her chest. For Hazel, the crackling has popped into a loose and comfortable feeling of having found her best friend in the whole world. For George, the feeling is an exciting bubbling beneath her collar bone because she adores other geniuses. For Alexander, it used to be an uncomfortable ball of anger that prickled inside the back of her throat, but now it is less of the hot and angry web it was and more of an appreciate simmering.And then there is Amina. A hot, tight, and busy ball of crackling that, for some reason, will not pop.Perhaps it will when they go out on a date.Modern AUWritten for the fifth prompt in the '100 ways to say "I love you"' prompt list by p0ck3tf0x on Tumblr.
Relationships: Alexander Arcady/Hazel Wong, Daisy Wells/Amina El Maghrabi, George Mukherjee/Original Male Character
Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1533164
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	"i'll walk you home"

I do not  _ glow _ at people.

Hazel says I do but a fair bit of what she says is nonsense.

Hazel herself  _ glows  _ at people. Around Alexander she looks as if she has swallowed a light bulb in the most annoying way. Around George, she shimmers with brilliance as they share a bond over deciphering codes and being decidedly not-English.

Alexander Arcady  _ brightens _ at people. His face lights up when he sees George, when he sees Hazel, and when he sees me (obviously, I am amazing). I could tell when his affections moved from myself to Hazel, I could tell the exact moment he realised that George had hooked up with the sprinting star of their school (we were getting coffee the day after when he realised), I can tell when he has had an idea about a case, and I can tell when Hazel has walked into the room just by his face. 

George Mukherjee, as I recently discovered,  _ melts _ . His measured and tempered demeanour simply slides away and a blush crawls up his neck and onto his cheeks. He turns pliant and agreeable and so  _ unlike _ him I am convinced it is not him.

I  _ crackle  _ at people.

When I like somebody, there is a crackling feeling in my chest that can be quite uncomfortable at times but warm and pleasant at others. It does not have to be a  _ romantic  _ sort of liking either.

I crackled in the most uncomfortable and burning way from the moment I slammed into Hazel in hockey for the first time, to when she accused of pretending to be foolish when I really am a brilliant genius. In that moment, there was a  _ pop _ of the crackling high in my chest. I knew I had found my best friend in all the world. It tingled through me in a warmth that went down to my toes and after that there was no more crackling. Instead, there is a warm loose feeling of comfort and understanding and closeness that will never go away no matter how vicious an argument we have. I have found my person, the person who I am comfortable with and will be comfortable will forever, and happy to spend my life with until I die. When I was smaller, I imagined that I would not have ‘a person’, that I would be all alone forever and rather pleased with the isolation. I would be brilliant and brave on my own. Instead, I have the small and Chinese and romantic and sometimes silly but usually very clever Hazel Wong who is now my very best friend in all the world.

I do love Hazel. 

When I met George, my chest crackled almost like bubbling and it continues to crackle whenever I am near him, a strange heat between my collar bones. Being around another genius is exciting and I adore it although I do not  _ like  _ him. He is alright as far as boys go, very tall and clean with pressed shirts and styled hair and schoolboy diction, but I do not see what Hazel does when I look at boys.

I do like George.

Alexander used to make me angry, hot and uncomfortable crackling at the back of my throat that almost made my throat feel scratchy with the force of it. He made Hazel and I fall out and the comfortable looseness in my chest twisted tight, and I wanted to shout back all of the horrid things he had made me feel at him. However, I did not and I am glad. Now he has quite finished mooning over me, he is quite a useful detective and he does make Hazel glow up at him in the most annoying way. George flat-out adores him and would protect Alexander with his life, and Alexander is just as fierce with love and care back to him, even if it is mostly shown though biting sarcasm. Over the years, I have untangled the hot and angry web of crackling so that it simmers under my skin in an agreeable way, so much so that I quite like him now. His sleeves are still too short, though.

Alexander is alright. 

Then there is Amina El Maghrabi.

Inside my chest, lower down over my heart, is where the crackling is for her. It is squashed just to the left of the huge amount of space in my chest that the warm and comfortable feeling of Hazel takes up. The cracking for Amina fought for a while for the space over my heart that Hazel occupied before they finally settled on occupying it in a fifty-one (Hazel) to forty-nine (Amina) ratio. It pulses with the beat of my heart and crackles in a way that is uncomfortably hot. However, once I realised why it was so uncomfortable, I began to enjoy it, though this enjoyment comes with a sharp jolt of pain every time I realise she will never like me back in the way I like her, and that the crackling will never swell and pop. If it pops, it will not take up the space Hazel does. No one ever could. Instead, it will be a hot and fizzy ball that is still comfortable like Hazel hut in a more thrilling way.

I am entranced by Amina. 

* * *

Hazel is the only person who knows about my crackling. The boys would think I'm insane, even though they would be losing out on my utterly genius insight to everything involving everyone I care about (the list is growing, which is dangerous).

As Hazel and I are quite cuddly best friends, she will often play her fingers over my collar bone, or down my back, or over the bottom of my rib cage, and ask what the crackling feels like where her fingers are. Most of my chest is filled with a comfortable and loose bubble of pure  _ Hazel _ , and she giggles when I tell her this. “Sap!” she says.

The two of us are in my Uncle Felix’s flat, which is where we live. When we were younger, Hazel and I went to a boarding school but we decided to do our GCSEs at a school in London. That means that we live together and that we have to sit in the same room when we have fought.

“What’s here?” Hazel asks, tapping the left side of my chest with two fingers.

“That’s… Amina.”

Hazel drops her pencil. “Ooh! What does it feel like? I bet it’s all…” She fluttered her fingers around, wriggling them against my side.

“No.” I clasp my hands together. “It’s a tight ball of crackling. It occupies the space over my heart, shared with you.”

She gasps as if offended, falling onto my lap. “No! That’s  _ my _ space, Amina can’t have it.”

“You share it,” I say with a sigh. Hazel is so slow, how did she not hear me say that the first time? “Fifty-one percent to forty-nine.”

“Is the fifty-one me?” she asks.

I roll my eyes. “Of course it is, you chump.”

With an enormous grin, she picks up her pencil and goes back to code-breaking.

The comfortable space for Hazel in my chest fizzes and I smile.

* * *

After our fifth period law class, Hazel and I are packing our things away. Well, that is an incorrect statement. We were. Hazel is sat up on a desk with her legs curled underneath her, phone in hand as she messages Alexander. I am staring at the only other person in the room. The only other person in the room is Amina, who thanks the teacher as he walks out before looping to the back of the class… where Hazel and I sit.

“Daisy Wells,” she says, one hand playing over the strap of her bag and the other tucking her dark hair behind her ear, “The carnival is tomorrow. Will you be going?”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” I lie. “Hazel is going with some friends but I wasn’t going to go.”

Hazel shoots me a surprised look and I glare, and she seems to understand why I am lying: Amina might be asking if I’m free.

“Well!” Her face brightens and the crackling in my chest increases tenfold. “I'll be going, would you like to go together? As a date.”

For a moment, I don’t respond as my chest crackles and burns uncomfortably, the area that crackles becoming more busy until the heat is unbearable. “I would love to, Amina.”

“Did it pop?” Hazel asks the moment that Amina leaves.

“No.” I will the crackling to calm down so that I can concentrate. “Hazel, I will never be happier in my life than this precise moment.”

“We haven’t even set up our detective agency yet!” she says, shaking her head.

I shake my head. I might burst. “No, Watson, never.”

* * *

**People I Tolerate**

_ 1:17pm _

**Watson: ** I have never seen Daisy FUSS so much! There are so many clothes strewn all over her room.

**George: ** Daisy Wells in love? I never thought I would live to see the day!

**Alexander: ** Is this rapture?

**Watson: ** It will go down in history, I’m sure.

**Alexander: ** We are witnessing a HISTORIC moment. You’ll never guess what George is doing.

**George: ** Oh bother you, Alex.

**Watson: ** What is it?

**Alexander:** I think this idiot wants to seduce someone (a specific someone) while we’re there. 

**George:** I did not use the word seduce.

**Alexander:** Bollocks!

**George** : Okay, fine, I did. Quinn is handsome, alright?

**Alexander: ** Hang on. You want to seduce QUINN FULLMAN? Didn’t you hook up with him once? 

**George: ** When you get here, I’ll give you details of why I want to ‘seduce’ him. And yes, we did hook up last year the night before the GCSE exams. 

**Watson: ** Backtrack, you hooked up with the sprinting star of the boys’ grammar school? I didn’t even know he was gay!

**Alexander: ** George didn’t know either until they had sex, to be fair.

**George: ** ALEX.

**Alexander: ** You told me so yourself!

**George: ** Prat.

**Alexander: ** Dick.

**George:** I love you really.

**Alexander: ** Love you too.

* * *

Shaking my head, I set down my phone and glare at Hazel where she is sat on my bed. She is wearing camo-patterned trousers and a black jumper, and she is failing miserably at pulling her hair back in twin French plaits.

I am always beautiful all the time but I need to look as beautiful as I can because I am going on a date with  _ Amina El Maghrabi. _

Eventually, I settle on a red a-line skirt with buttons all down the length of it in the centre at the front, a white blouse with long sleeves and a high, frilly neck. My shoes are brown boots that I got while thrifting with Hazel last week, and my always perfect blonde hair stays hanging in its naturally-beautiful ringlets.

“Has it popped?” Hazel inquires and the hot twist of anxiety in my chest dissipates when she speaks.

“Oh,  _ bother her,  _ Watson!” I complain, throwing myself down on the bed. “It hasn’t! Oh, I’ve never been so nervous in all my life!”

“Don’t be daft,” Hazel says, kissing me on the cheek.

I scowl internally because  _ she doesn’t understand _ . She can be so silly sometimes and it’s infuriating.

“Your plaits are disastrous,” I say, the space for Hazel in my chest fluttering as my anger dissipates. “Turn around and let me fix them.”

* * *

The boys are waiting for us at the gate of the fair. George is wearing a white jumper and a black blazer with blue jeans, and his white converse that he dyed rainbow. Alexander is wearing black jeans, as well as a white Falsettos t-shirt and a blue denim jacket. His shoes are converse, bright red. Crackling of irritation prickles in my throat when I see him. However, it doesn’t last long as Hazel absolutely lights up and rushes to him, pulling him into a hug. He leans down to kiss her and it is rather sweet.

I don’t  _ hate  _ him any longer.

“Daisy Wells,” George says gravely. “Turn around.”

Behind me is Amina, pretty in a white jumper with black spots, light blue jeans, and fluffy boots. “Hello, Daisy!”

I feel the crackling in my chest leap tenfold once again and it almost hurts. “Amina!”

“Ah, you must be Amina El Maghrabi,” says George, holding out a hand.

I glare. I don’t want her to know that I’ve spoken about her.

“Oh, and how do you know me?” she asks, bemused as she shakes his hand.

“Your rather stunning career in basketball, of course,” he says without a pause. “Now, we have tickets for all of us, let’s go.”

We begin our hunt for a food stall that sells vegetarian food. George takes charge as he usually does, holding the map in front of him and marching ahead. He is determined after my own heart and it sets my chest crackling under my collar.

I would be furious at him taking charge because I am so much more reliable and clever than he is. However, I am distracted.

“I’ve wanted to ask you on a date for a while,” Amina confesses, dark eyes sparkling bright. “You’re always so  _ pretty _ , Daisy Wells. And so intelligent too. I should think you’ll make a smashing lawyer one day. Or prime minister. Or an actress. What  _ is _ it you want to do?”

I feel the crackling over my heart fizz and bubble fiercely until it burns behind my eyes. “Hazel and I are going to set up a detective agency.”

“I’m sure you’ll be fantastic,” says Amina, and she takes my hand.

The crackling still doesn’t pop.

* * *

After a day of fairground rides, we find a spot to watch the fireworks. By ‘find a spot’, I of course mean that I had the genius idea for us to get on the Ferris wheel and watch from there.

When I suggest this, we have that idiotic polite moment where none of us want to point out the obvious: we have two couples and George Mukherjee.

Before someone can speak to voice a suggestion, Alexander coughs and raises his eyebrows, indicating something behind George’s shoulder. 

“George Mukherjee!” says a jovial and decidedly accented voice. George freezes and then does something odd that I have never seen him do before: he  _ melts _ .

“Hello, Quinn.”

Alexander is chuckling. 

“I heard you were coming today,” he says. “I’ve been looking for you.”

For a man, he is certainly a stereotype of attractiveness. His red hair is curly, his skin is saturated with freckles, his jawline is chiselled, and his Spanish-accented voice is deep and smooth. Like caramel, Hazel said later. I can tell that this boy is going to, whether we like it or not, end up important to us. I can tell by the way he instantly has a place in my chest for crackling. Right now, it is prickly and hot. I can’t trust him yet.

“I’ve been looking for  _ you _ ,” George says.

He isn’t lying. George has been looking here, there and everywhere since we got here.

Alexander tucks his phone into his pocket and smirks. I can only guess that he replied to one of those ‘anyone going to the fair?’ things on Quinn’s story with our location. Sneaky bastard. My throat crackles in appreciation of how he thought to do that.

“Are you going on this ride?” Quinn asks.

Shaking his head, George seems to be getting his natural confidence back as he says, “No. I don’t want to fifth-wheel and they’re all going on with each other.”

“I’ll go with you.”

George  _ melts _ . “I’d like that.”

* * *

When we are on the Ferris wheel, we stop at the top as the fireworks start. Amina sidles over to me as I name the chemical used in each firework. 

Then she kisses me.

There are sparks and it’s warm and messy and I feel her lips and her tongue, her braces and her teeth. It’s not perfect and it is and I think I should explore.

Still, the crackling in my chest does not pop. It is stronger and stronger, almost painful, as if it could worm from my chest and bubble up to my throat, coming out of my mouth in a far-too-early ‘I love you’.

When we stumble off the juddering Ferris wheel, Hazel is rather green and leaning against Alexander. He kisses the top of her head and runs a hand through her hair. He then gestures to a middle-aged couple and mumbles something that makes her burst out laughing.

The tight ball of hate for him unwinds a little more.

George is absolutely elated, chuckling at Quinn’s every other word and bumping his shoulder against his, their knuckles brushing.

I am crushed from the fact that nothing seems to relax the horrid feeling of an unrequited crush in my chest.

I tell Hazel and she softens, pulling me into a hug. “Oh,  _ Daisy _ ,” she says, and the comfort in my chest relaxes me once more. “We’re going to go and play some games and get some candy floss and things. Do you want to come?”

Shaking my head, I say, “I’m going to go back to the flat early, I think.”

I turn to leave but Amina is at my side.

“I’ll walk you home.”

All of a sudden, in a warmth that relaxes the painful crackling in my chest, the crackling pops.

I smile.


End file.
